England’s over-50 team are the No1 seeds in the world senior championship which has its closing rounds in Crete this weekend, with live and free internet viewing from 1pm. Yet their chances of gold are only slender after a 1-3 defeat by the No4 seeds, Armenia, a reversal which carries an uncomfortable echo of former times.

Leonard Barden on Chess

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A crucial battle will be in Saturday’s sixth round (of nine) when England, four match wins and a loss, play St Petersburg, who have beaten Armenia and won all their five matches.

Back in the 1980s England were three times Olympiad silver medallists behind the legendary Soviets led by Garry Kasparov and Anatoly Karpov but it was the nearest miss, at Dubai 1986, which proved traumatic.

Five rounds from the finish England were well ahead and a Guardian leader writer was already preparing editorial congratulations. Then the USSR cheated. USSR trainers gave open advice during play to England’s Spanish opponents, the arbiters took no action, the English grandmasters allowed it to affect their game, Spain won convincingly and at the end of the Olympiad the USSR sneaked first by half a point.

England continued to seek gold for more than a decade after that but their only success came in the European championship at Pula 1997 ahead of a weakened Russia. Nigel Short, John Nunn and Jon Speelman all played in Dubai and for them the world senior has become something of a crusade to find closure.

Board four Keith Arkell has won the European senior title but he too was pipped for a world crown on tie-break. Terry Chapman, board five, captain, and team sponsor, led England juniors in his teens and was regarded as the best talent after Speelman and Jonathan Mestel. He gave up chess, made a small fortune in the dotcom boom, and returned to competitive play as a personal exploration for what might have been. His high point has been a four-game match with Kasparov where Chapman, receiving two pawns odds, scored 1.5-2.5.

The England quintet prepared seriously. Short, at 51 the oldest GM in the world top 100, is fresh from winning the Bangkok Open. Nunn, one of the game’s best writers, competes in weekend opens to stay in shape. Speelman plays regularly in the 4NCL league, while Arkell and Chapman are prolific tournament veterans.

Yet there is a sense of déjà vu, of a repeat of the 1980s. Since the format of senior teams was changed from over-60 to over-50 and over-65, England have failed as No1 seeds at Vilnius 2014, where they lost to the Lithuanian hosts, and at Dresden 2015 and 2016 where they were pushed into bronze by Slovakia, Germany and Armenia.

Results are decided by match points, which means that in the world senior teams, which has only a few realistic contenders, a single off day can be decisive. It is now a question in Crete whether England can do well enough against St Petersburg and Israel to offset the loss to Armenia.

Below, Nunn crushed a German opponent’s dilatory Sicilian by opening up the centre with 9 Nd5! and 10 c3! followed by a fast assault on the black king.

The US champion, Wesley So, has recovered from a slow start at Shamkir, Azerbaijan, by beating Vlad Kramnik and so leapfrogging back over the Russian to the world No2 spot. England’s Michael Adams has performed well, beating the world title challenger Sergey Karjakin, who lost on time in an inferior position. Shamkir’s final two rounds are this weekend, viewable live and free online.

The unexpected English hero of this week’s Reykjavik Open was John Pigott, who achieved his IM title in style at age 59 by defeating the legendary GM Alexey (Fire on Board) Shirov in the final round, and probably narrowly breaking Jeff Horner’s British age record set in 2008.